Abstract Manager

An increase in travel demand leads to congested traffic and longer travel times accompanied with the increased gas consumption and emission production in the Greater Toronto (GTA). To reduce this problem, making public transit more attractive for road users is a viable solution. The purpose of this research is to assess the operational impact of the transit users for providing dedicated lane along the Queen Street corridor in the City of Brampton, Ontario, specifically by transforming it into a multi-modal corridor that increases mobility for both people and goods movement. PTV VISSIM microsimulation is used to mimic traffic flow conditions along 17 signalized intersections of the study corridor (9.9 km). The base model has been calibrated and validated speed and traffic data observed from the field. To evaluate the impact on operations, two alternative scenarios are considered, including dedicated Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lane, and a combination of implementing BRT lane, transit signal priority (TSP), and freight signal priority (FSP). Travel time and person's delay of each mode (i.e., passenger vehicles, buses, and freight) are used as the measure of the effectiveness (MOE) in this study. The result shows that, the implementation of a BRT lane reduce average travel time for transit by up to 2.5%, while causing an increase in travel time for freight and passenger vehicles by up to 8.4% and 8.0%, respectively. Combining BRT with TSP and FSP improves transit travel time by up to 4.7%, but the travel time for freight and passenger vehicles increases by up to 7.3% and 6.8%, respectively. In terms of person’s delay, implementing BRT lane decreases delay for transit users by up to 5.6%, but increases for freight and passenger vehicles by up to 4.3% and 6.2%, respectively. Implementing BRT with TSP and FSP, further decreases delay for transit users by up to 9.0%, but also causes an increase in delay of up to 3.8% for freight transportations and 5.1% for passenger vehicles. The study suggests that while implementing a BRT lane alone improves transit users’ mobility, it is more effective when combined with TSP and FSP to improve transit, freight, and passenger vehicle operations altogether along the study corridor.

Keywords: BRT, transit signal priority, freight signal priority, VISSIM, Micro-simulation